A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.

26 comments:

........and degenerate the country into Mexico.Los Angeles destroyed by Mexico thru retarded attitude towards education,superstitious fantasies of some Mayan culture renaisance that propells mexicans into the past,La Razzle,Cathaholisism,Racism to the degree that anything non brown is to be avoided,having forty five point nine children per seniorita,drunk driving to be made legal,gang lifestyle is attractive,Run down business,and hoods are a goal to be achieved,deep dish twenty inch rims signify the pinnacle for Males,90 children for females,and last but not least The Greaziest Trolls in California are hands down the Mexicans,But it was easy,cuz the mexican sheep follow any dork in zoot suit straight to the abyss no questions asked.America(north of the sewage treatment plant)is in deep shit.Even with all the money that the Mexicans take back to mexico,They still won't bring their home country up to a responsible standard of decency.Mexico-the one with the most of everything,yet nobody wants to stay.

And lets see how many of the goody two shoes in this forum call Shakster a racist for simply pointing out the truth. I hope to hell you guys never succeed in covering up reality by shutting people up who disagree with your nutty view of reality.

I have have lived in So-Cal my entire life and over the last couple of decades, it has slowly decayed into a third-world sewer. Entire sections of cities have been taken over by gangs and leave their god-damn graffiti on the walls the same way a dog leaves his urine on a tree to mark territory. Our public schools have gone from the top in the nation to near bottom, even though we spend more per capita than any other state, and no competent teacher wants to work anywhere near L.A. Yes, there's private school, if you can afford it.

If you want to live in one of the few decent communities that remain, the rent in a decent community will eat up half the take-home salary of the typical educated middle-class worker. the cost of buying a home in a good neighborhood is is just unbearable, about 600k for starters. The older, less expensive neighborhoods (about 400k for a shit box) have been dilapidated who stuff 25 people in one home and have the streets clogged up with old 1979 Dodge cars. Every year, more and more of the educated midd-class workers are leaving California for better conditions in other states.

To all of you kool-aid drinking, Bush supporting neo-cons, look at how much illegal immigration has cost the middle-class before you give us the tired old cliche, "the undocumented provide us with services at low costs and save us lots of money".

To all the leftists here -- get out of your ivory mansion and see how the middle-class is suffering!

We American taxpayers are supposed to bail out these illegal aliens who take out subprime loans to buy $500K houses and the morons who lend them the money. I have a graduate degree and I can't even afford a $500K house without a suicide loan. F%ck the politicians.

source: LA Times 4-1-07] TREASURY SAYS `NO' TO FEDERAL ROLE IN MORTGAGE MELTDOWN.U.S. Treasury spokesman Tony Fratto on March 30 rejected aFederal government role in stemming the growing nationalforeclosure wave. Some states, as previously reported, havelaunched or are preparing bond programs to ``bail out''delinquent mortgages, but this is a crisis in which only theFederal government is capable, for constitutional reasons, of making an effective intervention, as the leading American System economist Lyndon LaRouche has stressed. Millions of Americanhouseholds are losing their homes to rapacious mortgageinstruments designed on Wall Street to pump up Alan Greenspan's2001-2005 ``grand phase'' of the U.S. housing bubble. Legislation to revive and expand the Franklin D.Roosevelt-initiated Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has been introduced in Congress, but the White House evidently will opposeit. An article in {EIR} for April 6 will detail how FDR used theHome Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the FHA to turn aroundthe foreclosure crisis of home and farm mortgages in the GreatDepression. [pbg]

They are going to bankrupt us. Look at the Roman Empire! The outsiders that came into the empire sealed their doom, and when the visogoths entered, allowed by Ceasar, they sacked Rome. The visogoths inside the gate help them to enter through a secret passage way.

The republicans don't care and the democrates love them. We will be a banana republic soon! Even Ceasar Chavez was against the illegals, because he new they would hurt the labor union. A constant flood of slaves for the capitalists, who don't hesitate to leave the U.S. with their profits, American workers be damned! But if a banana republic seizes their assets, they want the Marines to save their ass.

I think they want us all to be the slaves to their international plantation! Where is Che when we need him! Workers of the world unite all you have to lose is your corporate master.

No, the scheme is far more insidious than what many of you are suggesting.

Do you think it's any accident that the sub-prime meltdown started primarily with the 2006 vintage loans, with a greater rate of default? Do you think it's an accident that sub-prime originations exploded in 2005-2007? I think not.

The reason subprime loan origination picked up dramatically in the tail-end of the Great Housing/Credit Bubble of 2001-2007 was to simply to usher in 'late-to-the-party' ignorant buyers into the market, in an attempt to keep the mania running long enough to allow the earlier "investors" (speculators) an exit strategy.

In other words, the market needed buyers who wanted to participate in the "American Dream of Home Ownership" who don't realize they're being offered a chance to catch a 'hot potato'. Many rushed in, being lured into home ownership despite the impossiblity of it all ($500k homes with granite countertops, etc, for someone making $20k a year using zero down, stated income, etc).

These tail-of-the-bubble buyers were ushered in at the end of the party, primarily to allow smarter buyers to exit from the market and realize their fake run-up in equity in the housing Ponzi scam.

The scheme wasn't so much caused by the sub-primes rushing in to bid up the market the first place (there were plenty of prime borrowers in 2000-2006, armed with big loans they ALSO couldn't afford); however, the sub-prime buyers were the suckers left holding the bag of worthless beans...

@@@@

What's really pathetic are the real estate/mortgage brokers who are scamming members of their race, using common ethnicity and language in order to lure new victims into a crashing Ponzi scheme in order to pocket the broker's fee before it becomes impossible to find new victims. How these REIC "pros" can sleep at night, fully knowing what they're doing to screw their own, I'll never understand....

If a few illegal Mexicans can do so much damage to your country, what kind of country was it to begin with?

Your local negros got uppity and you got scared of using them as cheap labor, so you import a whole class of mestizos to do the work that the uppity blacks used to do before those negros scared you by waving their huge negro penises around and hypnotizing your women with their voodoo music, no doubt.

Whatever blame you put on your imported labor class can be put onto yourselves. What a whiny bunch of people to always point the fingers at others, and not at yourselves.

To the guy crying that the "American taxpayers are supposed to bail out these illegal aliens who take out subprime loans to buy $500K houses and the morons who lend them the money"...

Well, who's forcing you to bail out those illegals? Look at the politicians you voted for. No illegal is bailed out, because as an illegal they don't have a credit rating to get ruined. They can go home and start life anew.

If anyone is bailed out... it's the bankers and mortgage brokers who lent the money in the first place, and the investors who bought the Collateralized Debt Obligations thinking they'll get back a huge investment.

It's your investor and managerial class who made huge profits by keeping the profits and socializing the losses.

So keep whining about the illegals... many far smarter people than you will make out like a theif, keep their profits, and your taxes will go higher.

I just laugh out loud at this. Keith is the smart one for leaving America and going to England.

I wouldn't call 30 million illegal aliens a few. Besides, they are a protected class that cannot be imprisoned unless they murder someone. In that case, they just return to Mexico to live a free man in the sewer they crawled out from

"Now to have your own home! Tariffs of until only 1%! It is a new paradigm, and all that now it does not buy, it will be appraised towards outside by always. They will compensate whatever it buys with a course of the life of wealth, as its characteristic will continue its increase annual 30% of the price. Those that they are rented, and anyone born in a future generation, will not be able to produce a home of starter $10.000.000 in 15 years. They will live in cities of the store, and Slings. This bubble of the assets is different that all the others - it will never delay, or to explode. The increases are permanent. "

and compete in your biddings with all the other people we lent 500,000 dollars to, to buy a house that without all those bidders with borrowed money, planning to make all those tax free flipping profits, would not sell for 50,000 dollars, or never play poker with someone using funny money!!!!

I'm a Mexican immigrant. I was raised in Los Angeles and have resided here for 27 years. I have a great job, speak three languages, pay taxes, and overall enjoy life. I also have enough discernment to know that on a blog "with an Attitude Problem" there may be posts to skip over and this is one of them. I recognize this site as important and one of many to which I'll keep visiting. Thanks for EVERYTHING ELSE Keith.

People - including those awful, evil brown skinned ones - are still buying. Prices are still going up. Renters are still renting and are yet another 5% further away from ever owning.

When do you throw in the towel and admit there is no crash?

I'm not Keith, but can address this one.

The fact people, especially ethnic minorities, are still buying is irrelevant. It is an incredibly stupid thing to buy at the tail end of an asset bubble, unless you want to be left holding the bag. The "smart" money investors left along time ago, or are trying to escape the market now to avoid losing their shirts. Some of these Hispanic buyers are the perfect stooges to be left holding the bag.....

Before you get in a tizzy calling me racist, realize I'm Hispanic.

Here's an account:

http://tinyurl.com/yqjvdq

Realize that housing is not a single national market, but is made up of many markets. Depending on the local economy, the RE market will vary.

For example, Michigan is basically in a recession due to what's happened to the auto manufacturing over the past few years. In that area, you can buy a house for less than a car. But do you really WANT to live in a house that is surrounded by foreclosed boarded-up homes, being used as a crack den, especially when it's likely YOU'D be unemployed, in an area with no jobs? Hmmmm...

FWIW, here's a video segment explaining what's going on around the Nation, according to the California Association of Realtors:

http://www.car.org/?id=MzcwNDM=

And here's information on California, from the surprisingly honest (isn't that refreshing for a change, eh?) California Association of Realtors:

http://www.car.org/index.php?id=MzAxNDE=

Yes, L.A. has appreciated on year-to-year pricing, whereas places like San Diego is starting to hit the bricks. In the Central Valley, we're seeing places like Bakersfield/Modesto/Sacramento spin downwards quickly, which is expected: most people bought there, primarily on speculation. Now that everyone is realizing the run-up days are over, prices are sliding fast. Homes languish on the market, as no one wants to buy a home that's going to be worth less than what they paid for it!

Some places like L.A. are still moving upwards, but frankly, I think alot of this is reflective of desparate attempts in 2006 to pick up bus-loads of unqualified buyers and put them into a house with a "NINJA" (no income, no job, no assets) loan. It really didn't matter to anyone whether they could TRULY afford the home or not: this was done to help bolster the sagging market, in areas like L.A. and San Jose.

According to the video from CAR, some 40% of loans in 2006 were toxic (whereas 25% of the 2005 vintage were sub-prime). That's a sure sign of the problem, right there. Hispanic customers were prime targets, as they saw this as their only chance to get a piece of the "American Dream".

As that video in Spanish promising "perpetual riches" demonstrates, unethical real estate agents wearing respectable business attire used forked tongues to screw their own people (getting their "fat" commissions in the process) into what probably will be a lifetime of ruined credit and pain. These types of slimeballs shoe-horned uneducated buyers into homes they ultimately will not be able to afford, once the teaser rates expire.....

How sad.

FWIW, this is nothing new: the same thing happened in the early 1980's when THAT bubble burst. Suddenly minorities that weren't welcome iin certain neighborhoods were buying into expensive houses, as the neighbors knew they wouldn't be sticking around for very long. This current bubble went on much longer, with greater price appreciation: thus it's gonna be painful for MANY more.

5% watch out, we are ready for take off, first of all that number is skewed by the high end transaction in the market go to someone in LA proper and see if their homes sells for 5% more than their neighbor's last year. Trolls just don't learn.

As for the whole illegal thing, first of all we should not call them illegal as they are invited guest of the elite, second why should we fight for the cumbs when it's our corporate masters who control the supply. this is classic divide and conquer wake up people and fight the real fight.